Discover Landscape Architecture

What is Landscape Architecture?

It is not just trees, shrubs, grass and flowers.

It is New York’s Central Park, Chicago’s Millennium Park, Pittsburgh’s waterfront, the World Trade Center Memorial, the John Deere Headquarters.

The Department of Landscape of Architecture at Iowa State University is a nationally ranked and internationally recognized program that helps you learn to change the world by re-imagining and re-shaping the landscape to enhance its ecological health, its cultural significance and its social relevance.

Our landscape architecture program is distinctive in its strong commitment to learning outside of the classroom through traveling and off-campus studios, as well as learning design through community engagement.

It is not just trees, shrubs, grass and flowers…

Graduates of our program are employed throughout the US and abroad, working for small and large firms, public agencies, and non-governmental organizations. Recent graduates are working for such firms as HOK in St. Louis, Michael VanValkenburg and Associates in New York, EDSA in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Martha Schwartz in London, and UC Green in Philadelphia.

In the five-year professional BLA program, you will have unique experiences, including a common core program in the first year; extensive field travel through the Traveling Savanna Studio in the second year; a semester-long internship, study abroad, or National Student Exchange program in your fourth year, and advanced interdisciplinary studios in your fifth year.

Both BLA and MLA students have a variety of international study opportunities, including the College of Design’s Rome Program, as well as other field travel experiences.